Farenheit 451

Synopsis:

Guy Montag is a fireman. But, in a near-future twist, firemen are no longer needed to put OUT fires. The government uses these men to go to the houses of those that have broken a specific laws and, there, these men must burn everything. That is, until one day, when Guy meets a teenaged neighbor who shocks his world and shakes his beliefs. Soon, he doesn't know good or evil, right or wrong.

Governmental Control:

The government bans books. This is in an effort to control ideas and philosophies to truly make all men equal:

I hope I've clarified things. The important thing for you to remember, Montag, is we're the Happiness Boys, the Dixie Duo, you and I and the others. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought. We have our fingers in the dike. Hold steady. Don't let the torrent of melancholy and drear philosophy drown our world. We depend on you. I don't think you realize how important you are, to our happy world as it stands now.

By controlling what people can read, the government can control what the perceptions of reality are, and thus can control the simulated states of happiness of its people.

Personal notes on this book (may contain spoilers!):

Or, at least, as spoiler you can get for a sixty-year-old book. It took me a long time to read this book, in the grand scheme of things. I have picked it up and put it down about ten times before I actually read the whole thing. Now that I have read it, I am glad that I did. It was a great book. But. Ten pages to go in the book, Bradbury invalidates all the actions of the book. And this irritated me. Montag really struggles with his new identity, the dichotomy of being a fireman who has struggled with the fact that books hold treasures, and he gets caught, which was inevitable. So, he gets out the only way he knows how. He torches his boss (that is the boss' quote that precedes this section) before he can be arrested. And there is finally a struggle of man vs. government that makes dystopian literature great. And as he's running, and the government is chasing, war is declared. It is a side note. It gets mentioned a few times through the chase, but it is not an ever-present concern. So, Montag gets out, the government captures some scapegoat because Montag has lost them, and Montag finds a group of expatriate professors and kindred spirits, but still lives in fear of the government. Then, ten pages to go, Bradbury nukes the freaking city. No more government. Montag wins! And thus, all his actions are invalidated. And the books are still gone. GOD. DAMMIT.

Important lesson of this book:

"Remember the firemen are rarely necessary. The public stopped reading of its own accord."

Read a book, for pity's sake!

From there to here:

This is a tough one to imagine. But I will try. The internet has already invalidated most books as it is. People have stopped reading long ago. In fact, I think that, of all the people I know, I can count the fiction readers who read regularly on two hands. And that is a shame. Movies, the internet, the instant gratification age has taken over. If the government convinces people that books are no longer necessary, libraries will crumble and publishers will close. The government convinces people that you can get all you need on the internet with your iPhone and your new Kindle and blah, blah, blah. Once books are gone, controlling the internet will be easy. Books can become the relics that it seems people have already made them. And, in an effort to save trees and be more green, printing of things is made illegal. Therefore, books are recycled and no more books.

Plausible, but not probable.

Overall:

First 150 pages: 9/10
Last 15 pages: 2/10